The Slugger O’Toole Awards – blogs and politics
Tim McGarry at the Slugger Awards Tonight in Belfast, we’re running the second in what I hope will become the annual ‘Slugger Awards‘. These awards – previewed here on the Amnesty blog – are something of a departure for political weblogs. It would be fair to say that politicians are – for the most part – less than thrilled by the way

Local democracy and the strange case of speed humps and 20 mph zones
Pic: Karlonsea - click for credit Speed humps: love ‘em or hate ‘em, here in the UK they’ve become a symbol of the traffic calming zeitgeist. Speed humps also p

Democratic, decentralised and difficult
I attended an interesting seminar yesterday afternoon, hosted by the 2020 Public Services Trust. The topic was the future of citizen-centred public services. The two principal speakers both brought innovative ideas and a real vision, which is more than can be said for a lot of these public policy seminars. Ben Jupp, from the Cabinet Office, and Christian Bason from the Danish reform institute Mind Lab, set out a vision that I might crudely summarise as: We need to understand that public service goe

Active citizens, subjective well-being and Clarksonism
Jeremy. Suffering in silence, as ever..... If you were to add one blog to your RSS reader at my request, please make it Chris Dillow’s Stumbling and Mumbling. It’s about ‘Clarksonism.’ Why  tedious self-pitying rich white blokes on the telly the question of

Visualising public spending
Further to the occasional series here looking at ways that people are using open data and visualisation tools to help clarify complex issues, here is the ‘where does my money go‘ application: The authors say that it’s not finished yet and you can look at their underlying data – they’re looking for feedback.